Environmental Ethics

Overview

Recall questions on stewardship and conservation, religious and secular positions, animal welfare, sustainability, waste and climate change, Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, Næss's deep ecology, and how far law, attitudes and religious perspectives shape the debate.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What do Jews and Christians usually mean when they call humanity a steward of creation?

   Model answer

   That the earth belongs to God and human beings hold it in trust rather than owning it. Reading the Genesis creation accounts this way, Jews and Christians take dominion to mean responsible care for which humanity is answerable to God, not a licence to exploit. Muslims express a similar idea through khalifah, humanity as God's trustee on earth.

2. 2

   Is stewardship the same as conservation?

   Model answer

   No. Stewardship is a religious account of why humans are accountable for the natural world; conservation is the practical management of habitats, species and resources. A conservationist need hold no theology at all, and stewardship can be argued for on grounds a secular conservationist would reject.

3. 3

   Give a worked religious position and a worked secular position on the environment.

   Model answer

   Religious: Catholic teaching in Laudato Si' (2015) treats care for creation as a moral duty, links environmental damage to injustice against the poor, and criticises a throwaway culture of consumption. Secular: deep ecology holds that non-human life has value in its own right, independent of any use to humans, so the whole biosphere generates obligations. Students may argue from either, or set them against each other.

4. 4

   How do religious and secular thinkers argue about animal welfare?

   Model answer

   Hindus, Buddhists and Jains appeal to ahimsa, non-harming, and many practise vegetarianism; Jewish and Muslim law imposes rules on slaughter that are themselves argued to reduce suffering, though critics dispute this. On the secular side, Peter Singer argues that a being's capacity to suffer is what earns it equal consideration, so ignoring animal pain is speciesism, while Tom Regan grounds protection in the rights of animals as subjects of a life.

5. 5

   Define sustainability and explain why it is an ethical idea and not just an economic one.

   Model answer

   Sustainability is meeting present needs without destroying the capacity of future generations to meet theirs. It is ethical because it asks whether people who do not yet exist can make claims on us, and whether present consumption can be justified against future cost.

6. 6

   Why is waste management treated as a moral issue rather than a technical one?

   Model answer

   Because how much a society throws away reflects choices about consumption, and because the burden of landfill, incineration and exported plastic falls unequally, often on poorer communities and poorer countries. Religious critics add that treating goods as disposable expresses ingratitude for gifts held in trust.

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